FicWad

Disclaimer: Chrono Trigger and all its attendant goodies belong to Square-Enix. I'm just playing in their sandbox. Further information can be found in the header for Chapter One.



Skimming through the rest of Belthasar's research was difficult with so many worries competing for her attention, but Lucca managed to find a few pages of formulas and data that she thought she could use in conjunction with her own work. If she could have set aside a week for tinkering and calculating at home, she almost would have been excited.

Nadia, in the meantime, was amusing herself by reading selections from one of Belthasar's many treatises on the Nu in different voices. "You know," she said as the material began to wear thin, "I used to want to have my own radio show. /Princess Nadia's Adventures/, or something. Of course, when I was a kid, I didn't really get that those weren't real superheroes. I liked to pretend they were recording stuff that was really happening."

There was a little tug in Lucca's brain, and she looked up with a frown.

"I'm sorry," said Nadia. "Did I say something wrong?"

"No, it's just..." Lucca set down the papers she'd been examining. "When Crono and I were kids, I used to go to his house every Saturday morning so we could listen to the radio shows together. My family had a better radio, see, but his mom made better pancakes. And then we'd run around outside pretending we were the characters."

Nadia smiled. "Sounds like fun."

"I'll bet it was. But I only know about it because I mentioned it in my notebook. All I can remember is sitting in my bedroom with the curtains drawn, listening to all those fantastic stories about heroes and wishing I had someone to play make-believe with." Letting out a long breath, Lucca tapped her fingers against the console. "I think it's changing me."

"Well, I won't let it." When Lucca turned, Nadia had her jaw set in a way that indicated the fundamental truths of reality were in for a surprise. "I mean it. If you try to go crazy on me, I won't let you."

"And the funny part? I really do appreciate that." Slipping the last of the coherent notes into her knapsack, Lucca added, "We might as well go. There's nothing else here."

Nadia nodded and got to her feet. "Yeah, I guess Ernie was kind of a bust."

"Caution!"

Lucca spun at the sound, catching sight of the Nu's wild eyes as it said, "The Time Axis is out of order." Then the creature blinked once, placidly, before falling back asleep.

"Well, you don't say," she muttered, heading for the door.

"What's a time axis?" asked Nadia.

"I think it's the giant pole rammed up Ernie's butt."

"No, seriously."

Lucca shrugged as she made her way outside. "It's either an imaginary line through history, or else just another name for the x axis when you're graphing the velocity of a killer baseball."

"I don't think you're being serious yet."

"You've got my gun. This is the only stress relief I have left."

The sewer was as empty on the return trip as it had been on the first, although the silence made Lucca jumpier than it had before. There should be rats, she thought, trying to control her breathing after mistaking reflections on the murky water for a pair of eyes. There are always rats. What's the point in being a rat if you can't make it a measly three hundred years after the apocalypse?

The next thought came in a white hot flash: There were supposed to be rats in Lab 16, too.

She acted on instinct. As Nadia reached for the ladder leading back to the surface, Lucca leapt forward and tackled her.

"Ow! Hey!" Wincing, Nadia rubbed her elbow where it had smacked against the floor. "What was-"

"Just listen for a minute." As Nadia complied, a bit sulkily, Lucca strained her ears against the silence. She could just make out the slight hum of the fluorescent lights, keeping the sewer bright in a way that should have set off alarm bells before. Apparently Lucca had to be working her way to an emotional meltdown before she could keep herself alert. Hello, dysfunction.

Nadia frowned. "I don't hear anything."

"Except the lights." Pointing at the ceiling, Lucca said, "The robots must be in control of the power grid by now. Why keep this place turned on? Why was there still electricity for the Enertron in Arris Dome?"

"The same reason I leave the water running when I brush my teeth?"

Lucca paused. "Actually, that's not a bad comparison. See, I'm pretty sure they keep everything going because this is their territory. They own this place."

With a nervous glance at the ladder, Nadia scooted back against the wall and gripped the gun. "You don't mean there are robots hiding here?"

"Just the opposite. There are no guards here. Nothing. And it's still empty. It must have been... secured." The word almost caught in Lucca's throat. "I'm betting nothing's supposed to be able to pass through the labs."

Nadia shivered. "But what about Ernie? He's-"

"A Nu." Lucca shrugged and added, "Maybe the robots just don't care, or else my delightfully vivid memory of catching a headbutt with my stomach is a good indicator of how tough a Nu can be. Or maybe not even machines want to hang around Death Peak."

There was a soft rapping sound. Nadia yelped and fired a wild shot into the water, splashing it over the edge of the floor.

"That was you," Lucca said. "You were tapping your foot." As Nadia blushed, she continued, "Anyway, a whole pack of droids watched us get through the lab. They know we don't have anywhere else to go. We're-" not the last human beings, not the last human beings/- "targets." /Gee, that's so much better.

Nadia shuddered again. "I really, really don't like the future. Have I mentioned that yet?"

"I hear you. And we need a new plan." Trying halfheartedly to convince herself that she didn't have any ulterior motives, Lucca said, "It'll be hard enough just returning to the Gate. There's no way we'd make it all the way east and back again."

"Hang on! You're just going to give up on Robo?" Nadia's words cut like scalpels. "I thought we were at at least going to try! What if he's-"

"What if, what if, what if/?" The last word was almost a scream, and Lucca struggled to lower her voice as she got to her feet. "I already erased him, remember? What else can I do? I say I'm going to fix this, and I'm going to get rid of it, and it won't matter- but it still won't be okay, because /nothing is ever going to be completely okay. There's always going to be something wrong, and I can't do a damn thing about it."

As Nadia tried to protest, Lucca turned and gripped one of the lower rungs of the ladder until her knuckles went white. So what does matter? Where'd we put the line between "We can't save everyone" and "Here's who we won't"?

"Lucca, just..." Nadia's hand rested on her shoulder. "Just have a little faith, okay?"

"You know, that's actually what got me into this mess in the first place." Shaking her head, Lucca began to climb, saying, "Follow me and keep your eyes peeled. We'll try to follow the coast around the lab."

"No."

Wincing, Lucca stopped her ascent. Nadia had rerouted the current of her will, and Lucca found herself clinging to the rungs as if they could keep her from being swept away in the flood.

"Look," said Nadia, in the voice that channeled a millennium of royal authority, "I said I wasn't going to let you go crazy on me, right? Well, what you just said was crazy other-Lucca talking. I know you're scared- I'm scared, too- but we're going to go east and look for Robo. We are not giving up. Ever." There was a deliberate pause. "And I'm pretty sure you said there was a Gate there before, too. So we'll take that one home." Apparently feeling that the situation called for stronger language than normal, Nadia added, "Dammit."

Several seconds' thought failed to resolve whether the heat in Lucca's face was from shame or anger. At last she took a deep breath, said, "Thanks, I needed that," and broke into laughter.

Nadia tapped at her ankle, and Lucca looked down to see the princess's perplexed expression. "Um-"

"Sorry." Lucca coughed to cover a giggle. "It's just, well, for you, that was /badass/." Then she was laughing again until her sides ached.

For a moment, Nadia looked miffed, but she quickly broke into a grin. "Better watch out. I swear like a sailor when I'm angry."

"I'll bet." Clearing her throat until her snickering subsided into a smile, Lucca turned back to the ladder. "But we're all crazy here, right? I'm the one who's about to lead us into near-certain death."

"Aw, just /near/-certain?" Nadia's voice came from the base of the ladder, and Lucca began to climb again as she added, "Damn hell ass."

"Hey, you're the one getting squashed if I fall down laughing."

There was no death squad waiting on the surface, but Lucca remained wary as she led the way to Lab 32. Considering that there was no food in the area and only two ways out, the robots had probably concluded that it would be most expedient to wait for the intruders either to enter one of the labs or to give any their location by tapping into the power grid. They're probably all over Arris Dome by now, assuming they're in any kind of hurry to wipe us out. As helpful as a patiently indifferent response would have been, Lucca felt a cold sickness rise in her throat every time she considered it.

Okay, not thinking about it.

"See that rock?" she said, halting Nadia. "See if you can shoot it."

Nadia's first shot went wide, but she quickly figured out how to compensate. It wasn't long before more than half of the blasts were finding their target, and the rock was pocked and spotted with black marks.

"Not bad," Lucca said as they resumed walking.

Nadia beamed. "It's not that different from a crossbow, really." She paused to twirl the gun around her finger. "Now I feel like I should have high heels and something in black leather."

A tremor went through Lucca's brain, and she was saved from the visual only when Lab 32 appeared through the dark haze. "Thank you, near-certain death," she muttered, only to be exponentially less grateful when her brain transferred the leather and stiletto heels to Johnny. If this is insanity, I don't think I'm going to like it.

"So this is where the hair is?" asked Nadia as they came to entrance.

Lucca frowned and pulled her notebook out of her bag. "I feel like we're missing something," she said, then stopped and cursed as she found the page. "Of course. We don't have the key to the jet bike."

"We can't just walk?"

"Before, yeah. But now?" Sighing, Lucca put away the book and trudged inside.

Nadia's voice was obstinately hopeful. "Maybe the hair guy has a spare."

Actually... Mulling over an idea, Lucca peered around a ruined terminal and called, "Hey, Johnny!"

As the clatter of approaching robots filled the air, she spent a panicked moment thinking that she might have called down an extermination squad. But the robots that appeared were a far cry from the sleek, well-armed security droids of Lab 16, and her fears were hushed when the noisy revving of an engine was followed by the squeal of brakes, a choking cloud of exhaust, and the appearance of a modified android.

Well, whaddya know? He really /is a tricycle./

"He's a robot," Nadia whispered as Johnny gave them an intrigued look. "Why the heck does he need hairgel?"

Lucca shrugged. "One of those impossible mysteries of time and space, I guess. Like why people like jerky."

"Hey, hey," Johnny called, in a grating voice that was still familiar, "you're /organics/? Heh! Thought I'd never see bloodbags 'round here again."

Nadia looked offended on behalf of lifeforms everywhere, so Lucca jumped to answer first. "Yeah. You got a problem with that?"

Johnny switched from bipedal to bicycle in a smooth motion, then zoomed toward them, screeching to a halt with only inches to spare. Nadia's startled leap brought a grin to his face. "So, babe," he said, sliding his wheels up his back, "whatcha doing alive? Thought we'd run outta your kind, know what I'm saying?"

"What's it to you?" Leather or no, Nadia could cop a convincing attitude. "We're pretty tough to get rid of."

"Pfft. Pests." Johnny ran a hand through his hair and completely failed to be ironic about it. As his sunglasses flipped up to let his eye sensors scan the girls, he broke into an even broader grin. "Got some luggage there, sweethearts. Planning a little trip?"

If I ever find out who created his AI, I'll have to rewrite history again. The joke fell flat even in her head, and Lucca frowned as she said, "We're here to race."

One of the robot lackeys sounded a loud buzzer that made both girls cover their ears.

"On what, those flesh-sticks you call legs?" Johnny's laugh put Lucca in mind of a mentally unstable goat. "Babe, /please/."

Nadia put a hand on her hip. "We heard you've got a jet bike around here. We're here to ride."

A flicker behind Johnny's glasses betrayed his interest. "Hey, got the key?"

"Well, not /exactly/," said Nadia.

This time Lucca was prepared for the buzzer, but Nadia didn't get her hands to her ears quickly enough to avoid wincing, which elicited another round of laughter from Johnny. Lucca caught herself trying to locate his speakers.

"Well," Johnny drawled, slouching against one of his flunkeys, "I guess you chumps are right outta luck. You got guts showing your little pink hides around here, though. I like that. So I'll give you a five-minute headstart before I broadcast this thing over the security network, and maybe you two can keep those guts on the inside." Brushing his hair back, Johnny added, "But hey, come back if you ever find the key. We'll ride the wind, babe."

Nadia tugged on Lucca's sleeve and whispered, "So is he hitting on us or just being creepy?"

Lucca made a face. "How would his hitting on us not be creepy?"

"Good point. So what now?"

Pursing her lips, Lucca glanced over the layout of the room. The four lackey droids wouldn't last long in the face of a good fire spell, but Johnny's reference to keeping the girls off the network gave her pause. How quickly could it transmit data? Would it activate automatically in the case of a threat? Would a suspicious move bring an extermination squad down on their heads?

Only one way to find out.

"Okay," Lucca whispered, hoping that her voice was too low for the robots' sound sensors to pick up, "when I wave my hand, point the gun at Bikeboy and look menacing."

"I am menacing. They call me 'Nadia Never-misses.'"

"That's the spirit." Taking a deep breath, Lucca strode past the robots to Johnny.

His sunglasses snapped up on their hinge, giving her a view of his half-lit eye bulbs. "Don't know a good thing when you see it, do ya, babe? Hey, if you want to be exterminated..."

She beckoned him to lean forward, and, tilting his head curiously, he obeyed. "Actually," she said, "I want to cut a deal. Ditch the droids so we can talk."

Laughing, Johnny straightened up. "What, when there's an alert out on two 'probable humans' who blazed through Lab 16? You wish, babe." He shrugged and added, "Offer stands, though. Four minutes, three seconds."

"As long as we understand each other, then." As casually as she could, Lucca began to turn back to the exit, only to spin around and whip fireballs off her fingers at the droids.

Lucca couldn't have asked for a better shot. Her targets were clustered around Johnny in a sycophantic semicircle, and none of them were built to withstand high temperatures. Before Johnny could make a move, Nadia cleared her throat demurely and drew his attention to her gun.

"Don't even think about reporting us," Lucca said, hoping that he hadn't already done so. "If I detect any network activity coming from you, Miss Never-misses and I are going to open fire. And I hear styling products are pretty darn flammable." To strengthen the pretense, Lucca tapped her helmet's antenna.

Johnny snarled. "You ungrateful organ-sacks deserve what you get."

The beginnings of guilt flickered over Nadia's face, so Lucca rushed to say, "If war's hell, I wonder what that makes genocide?" She gestured for Nadia to advance, keeping the gun trained on Johnny. "We're crossing the lab. And you're giving us a ride."

"Feh. I can have a unit here in less than a minute."

"And I can melt your circuitry in less than a second. How's your math?"

As Johnny slid into his motorcycle mode, growling, Nadia leaned over to whisper, "This feels, I don't know, /wrong/, doesn't it? I mean, we're the good guys..."

"Which means our ends should count for something, right?" Lucca frowned as soon as the words left her mouth. It shouldn't matter if it's only going to be erased, she told herself, but Nadia's image eclipsed the thought. "Look, he's a jerk, anyway."

Nadia rode in front, holding the gun at the ready in case Johnny tried to throw them, but Lucca could read the reluctance in her shoulders. I know, she wanted to say, but someone has to make the hard decisions, and maybe you should be grateful it's not you. Lucca wondered which of her selves had worked out that bit of justification. Crono would have said something, but Crono never existed.

As they reached the other end of the highway and began to decelerate, Nadia relaxed her gun arm with obvious relief. "Okay," Lucca said, "just let us off-"

Johnny braked with enough force to send both girls flying into the wreckage, then vanished with a squeal and a cloud of exhaust.

"Owww," moaned Nadia from atop a pile of dirt. "You okay?"

"Just bruised, I think." Wincing, Lucca picked herself up from an ash-heap and tried not to look at the jagged metal she had narrowly missed. "In retrospect, we probably shouldn't have stopped threatening him while we were still in motion."

"At least he wasn't going full-speed." Nadia took Lucca's proffered hand and got shakily to her feet. "I'm not bleeding anywhere, am I?"

If she was, it wasn't heavily enough to show through the dirt. "Probably not," Lucca replied. "You up to running? Even if Johnny was exaggerating, I'm betting we don't have long before this place is crawling with robots."

As they dashed out of the lab and into the eternal dust storm, Lucca tried to work out the safest route to Proto Dome. Staying on the main road wouldn't be much more surreptitious than setting off signal flares, and she was already developing a stitch in her side. We need cover, and we need cover we can walk behind.

Lucca's gaze fell on the boulders and shallow cliffs along the nearby southern coast. Motioning for Nadia to follow, she sprinted for them.

"See?" she panted once they'd scrambled down behind a long shelf of rock. "Cover." One coughing fit later, Lucca added, "Also, dust."

"Ugh. I think I'm getting allergic to the future." Nadia was wheezing a little, too, but not as badly. While Lucca took a few more seconds to recover, Nadia peered down at the bruise-colored ocean and asked, "So do we jump in and swim for it if we get cornered?"

"Given the choice between killer robots and post-apocalyptic water, I'll take the robots, thanks." Lucca's breath was returning, and she paused only to brush some of the grit off her glasses before starting to follow the land east, with Nadia scampering ahead.

Only a year ago, the robots' strongholds had been limited, and any networks they had were restricted to single domes or factories. That Johnny knew about what happened in Lab 16 suggested a network that spanned at least half a continent, if not the entire world. Which would be much more exciting if it weren't being used to hunt down the remnants of humanity.

Lucca shook the speculation out of her head. What mattered was that such a thing couldn't have come about in twelve months any more than Zeal could have gone airborne overnight.

"It just doesn't make sense," she mused aloud. "Arris Dome's been deserted for more than a year, obviously. Even if Doan-"

Nadia stopped walking and turned. "Who?"

Ah, so this is why /internal monologues are so popular./ "Doan. Your descendent. Also the descendent of the director of Arris Dome's info center."

"Lucca. Sentences."

Sighing, Lucca halted and resigned herself to sharing. "Look, he used to be your descendent, okay? But we met him after you met Crono. If that already set a change in motion, Doan must have been Crono's descendent, too, and you can see how that would get sticky." Lucca shook her head. "But that's not big enough. I mean, he was the leader at Arris Dome, but that doesn't explain why everything else is wrong. Something /happened/, something big enough to-"

Realization crashed over her like a plate of glass, shattering the world into a million shards that all reflected the same image. Shit. Way to overlook the obvious.

Nadia waved. "Earth to Lucca, what-"

"Sandorino. Again." Lucca bit her lip. "If I'd had any idea how much that town was going to screw up the world, I would've burned it down myself."

"Lucca-"

"Look, I'm not going to feel guilty for saying that." Before Nadia could protest, she went on, "It's not like we just have one Renaldo to worry about- we've got thousands of Renaldos running around with their sleazy moustaches and nasty grins, and nothing after 758 AD is right anymore. So Jack and Jill get together after all- so what? We've still got all those other Renaldos scraping history against a cheese grater."

Nadia raised her hand. "Hold up. How did we get from robots to Renaldo?"

"The hard way." Lucca took a moment to clean her glasses. "Maybe having Sandorino around created another major dome, something the machines could use as part of their infrastructure. Or maybe somebody's descendent made a technological leap that backfired after Lavos came out. Or maybe it's just a million little things." She shook her head. "There's no way to straighten it all out."


For a moment, Nadia was silent, but her gaze was uncomfortably intense. "You really mean it, don't you?" she said at last. "You really do want to go back and let everyone die."

Lucca returned the look. "Would you want to live if-" The sentence almost finished itself before she realized what she was saying, and Lucca grimaced. "Look, that's not what I-"

"I know." Nadia started walking again, her gait stiff. "I just don't think we get to choose for them."

Oh, Lucca wanted to say, so they get to choose for everyone else, instead?

But there would have been no point in voicing the thought; she and Nadia could spend the rest of lives arguing against a backdrop of ashes, and it wouldn't change what had happened or had to happen. It wouldn't make the issue anything more than hypothetical, either, unless Red Gates were spun out of words and air.

If Frog isn't over himself by the time we get back, I'm going to drag him out of that hole by his tongue.

"I'm sorry," said Nadia, slowing her pace to match Lucca's as they curved south with the coast. "We shouldn't be fighting at a time like this."

"Agreed." Much better to worry about robotic death squads, instead.

A sudden squeak made her jump, and Lucca summoned up two fistfuls of fire as she turned to face the sound. The flames faded as she discerned the wiry, dust-colored body of a rat scurrying under a pile of stones.

"Was that what I think it was?" Nadia asked after a beat.

"Depends. If you think it was the Good Fairy of Springtime, probably not." Lucca stared at the area where the rat had disappeared, feeling an absurdly grateful smile tug at her lips. "But chalk one up for life."

Nadia squinted at the rubble around the base of the cliff. "I wonder how many more there are."

"Billions, I hope." Lucca grinned as she added, "This would sound really weird out of context, but I hope the whole planet's infested."

As she and Nadia continued along the shore, they paused occasionally to point out tiny gaps in the rock and debate whether a pinkish flash had been a tail or a trick of the wind. Lucca preferred that sort of alertness to assuming that every patter was a harbinger of death.

On the other hand, when Proto Dome came into view and the landscape remained droid-free, Lucca felt paranoia creeping back into her thoughts. They're tracking us in secret. Johnny stuck a homing device on us. The rats are in league with them. The rats are cyborgs.

Lucca pinched the bridge of her nose. "I've hit bionic rats. Help me."

Nadia considered for a moment, then began to sing quietly, "Once was a fiddler in Porre town, they say, they say, they say..."

Whether consciously or not, she had picked a folk song that appeared unchanged in all of Lucca's memories, unlike "The Forest Nymph" or "One Night in Medina." Whether Lucca had consistently liked the song was fuzzier, but at least she felt a comforting sense of familiarity as she took up the next line: "Charming them all with his golden sound, tra-lay, tra-lay, tra-lay."

"Never did anyone dare to ask, oh, no, oh, no, oh, no..."

"What did he hide with his velvet mask? Tra-lo, tra-lo, tra-lo."

By the time they drew near to the back of the dome, the miller's daughter had tricked the fiddler into removing his mask and gloves, revealing that he was nothing but a skeleton. The next twenty or so verses detailed how this had come to be, Lucca recalled, but she'd only ever seen them in print. While there were certainly more annoying nursery rhymes, "The Cursed Fiddler of Porre" was the only one on which every babysitter in Truce had set a non-negotiable ban.

"My nursemaid always hit her limit around here," Nadia said. "You know any more of it?"

Lucca's attention had shifted to picking her way between the western side of the dome and the sea, but it was easy enough to delve into the fairly consistent memory of reading the lyrics for a class. "I don't remember exactly how it goes, but I think the guy was cursed to waste away and wander forever. It was a stupid reason, too, like he wasn't nice enough to his mother or something." She paused to listen for any suspicious noises, then added, "I don't think the curse really bothered him, either. I'm pretty sure he even bragged about it. Then he disappears with the miller's daughter at the end, but I don't remember if she wanted to go."

Nadia wrinkled her nose. "Well, that sucks. No wonder nobody ever finishes it."

There was a soft scattering sound from beyond the curve of the dome, as of pebbles shifting under a clumsy foot. Grabbing Nadia's arm, Lucca pressed herself against the dome and strained her ears. It would be strange for a robot to lose its balance like that, but it was dangerous to assume the best.

As the seconds crept by, the shuffling sound drew nearer. Lucca pushed heat into her palms and glanced at Nadia, who held her gun at the ready. They exchanged a nod.

The footsteps came almost to the curve of the dome. As Lucca prepared to send an explosion toward their creator, a shrill scream rent the silence.

For an instant, the world was replaced by a vision of a bone-white machine, then by flashes of real bone that was actually mostly red.

The nightmare vanished when a little blur ran across the space between the front of the dome and a nearby crater. Ran, Lucca thought with a strange detachment. Legs. Human.

"Hang on," Nadia whispered, "was that-"

From beyond the bend of the dome came the crunch of metal against metal, then against shards of glass. The tactical portion of Lucca's brain took over. One. Humanoid. Heavy. Not a security droid. Trying to stay focused, Lucca crept as rapidly as she dared toward the nearest pile of wreckage that would offer cover. Nadia followed in silence.

They crouched behind a twisted steel formation just as a bright gleam came into the open. Holding her breath, Lucca peered through a gap into her makeshift bulwark. Hinged foot segments. Thick ankle-plating. Something cracked inside her as the robot advanced unhurriedly toward the crater: R-series.

But I don't know it, Mommy! I wish I hadn't heard... If only I...

The little piece of amber had always been there to remind her, but not even four hundred years and a lot of pressure could survive what she had done. Butterlies flapped their wings and drowned the whole world in storms. What were memories, anyway, but the most plausible fictions?

mom walked crono lived in the house with the green door-

It all burned down to ash, and even the smoke was lost.

No, the smoke was still there.

Lucca snapped out of it to find that Nadia had tackled her to put out the fire she'd managed to set on her shirt. "Don't you dare," the princess was whispering. "Don't you dare freak out on me. I need you here."

A hero would have stood, challanged, and fought, or at least done /something/. Heroes always knew the right thing to do, and everything else fell into place around them. World and time shifted to justify their actions.

"But I break things," she said aloud, almost without realizing it.

Nadia shook her head. "You build things, too." It was a vaporous hope, but at least it was enough to change the taste of the air. That was more than could be said for the hope that the robot's intentions were anything but hostile, or that the serial number would be unfamiliar.

Through the gap in the metal, Lucca watched the dull golden machine come to the edge of the crater. The second scream decided her.

But she didn't get a chance to act before Nadia leapt to her feet and bellowed, "You leave that kid alone!"

I would have, Lucca told herself, ignoring the weakness in her knees as she stood. I'm not that far gone. In a voice that very nearly didn't shake, she shouted, "Prometheus!"

There was a pause, during which the only sound was a child's terrified sobbing. Then the upper half of the robot's head swivelled until the glowing eyes locked on her, and even without the dent there was no mistaking him.

The hum of charging weapons came over the wind as Prometheus advanced. "Priority targets acquired."